With advances in cellular telephony, it has become possible for the users of mobile terminals such as smartphones to install desired applications in their devices for application usage. These mobile terminals are equipped with the function to acquire an application by recognizing a terminal status change such as the start or end of a communication as an event.
There have been proposed remote collaboration systems whereby remotely located users collaborate on a task via a network. Also, there have been proposed teleconferencing systems whereby such users refer to materials, draw diagrams, or exchange files at the same time.
With these teleconferencing systems, users form a group for a certain period of time in advance or for the moment. The users belonging to the group exchange messages between them, and the users' terminals carry out processes corresponding to the exchanged messages to implement a teleconference. The members participating in the group and the period of time in which the group is being formed are managed as a session. Control is performed so that as long as the session is continued, the members taking part in the session are allowed to exchange messages therebetween. A program running on the terminals operated by users of such a remote collaboration system has the function to transmit as data the operations carried out on each terminal to the other terminals so that the program having received the data executes what is described by the receive data on its own terminal.
In connection with these teleconferencing systems, there have been proposed methods for designating a collaborative partner in linkage with a telephone.
Patent Literature 1 cited below describes a system that permits messages to be exchanged between client terminals in linkage with voice call connection status of their telephones.
Patent Literature 2 cited below describes a system that allows a private branch exchange to manage personal computers (PCs) linked with telephone numbers. With the system disclosed by Patent Literature 2, telephones having specific telephone numbers may initiate a voice call with each other via the private branch exchange. In turn, the PCs corresponding to the telephones communicating with each other are notified of the start of an application by the private branch exchange. The notification causes the application to be started on the PCs corresponding to the telephones.
Patent Literature 3 cited below describes a system that offers a file-sharing space to the users engaged in a voice call with each other via an exchange. The PCs utilized by these users are then used to store and acquire files to and from the file-sharing space.
Patent Literature 4 cited below describes a system that generates a browser-to-browser session. With the system disclosed by Patent Literature 4, the home gateways (HGW) of the caller and receiver of each voice call send their own terminals' telephone numbers and their call session IDs to a service server as voice call session information. The system uses a correspondence server to associate browser accesses with the voice call session information to generate a browser-to-browser session.
Patent Literature 5 describes a system in which Web browsers installed in a plurality of terminals exchange messages via a message relay server incorporated in a Web server, whereby the individual Web browsers are synchronized.